200 Million Email Addresses Leaked Online for Twitter Users #Twitter_Disaster
A hacker is offering email addresses allegedly belonging to more than 200 million Twitter users for just two dollars on a well-known hacking forum.
Since July of last year, hackers have been releasing a large dataset of Twitter user profiles scraped from the platform, which contains private data such as phone numbers and email addresses, as well as public data such as usernames and join dates — offered for sale on various hacking and cybercrime forums and marketplaces.
The datasets were created in 2021 by exploiting a vulnerability in the Twitter API that allowed users to enter email addresses and phone numbers to confirm whether they were already linked to a Twitter ID.
Hackers then used another API to extract public Twitter ID data and combined that public data with private email addresses and phone numbers to build profiles of Twitter users.
Although the security vulnerability was patched in January 2022, many hackers recently began leaking the datasets — which these individuals had been collecting over several years!!
Also:
The first dataset, comprising approximately 5.4 million users, was sold last July for $30,000 and made available for free on November 27. In November, another dataset was published that was said to contain data on approximately 17 million users.
More recently, a hacker posted a dataset claiming to contain 400 million profiles on Twitter, collected using this vulnerability.
Now, a hacker has posted a dataset of 200 million Twitter profiles on the breached hacking forum for 8 forum credits, equivalent to approximately $2.
The hacker claimed that the dataset was the same 400 million profiles that circulated last November, but had been cleaned to remove duplicates, reducing the total to approximately 221,608,279 rows. However, tests by BleepingComputer confirmed that duplicate rows were present in this set, and also confirmed that the leaked data for multiple accounts was accurate.
Additionally:
The data was exported as a RAR archive containing 6 text files,
totaling 59 GB of data. Each line in the file represents a Twitter user and their data,
which includes the email address, name, display name, follower count, and account creation date.
It is worth noting that the danger of this data leak
lies in the fact that hackers use email addresses to launch phishing attacks against accounts, especially verified accounts with large numbers of followers.
This leak is also a major privacy concern, particularly for Twitter users who tweet anonymously. Through this leak, it is possible to identify anonymous Twitter users and reveal their real identities.
All Twitter users are advised to be vigilant against targeted phishing attempts that try to steal their passwords or other sensitive information.
Do you find this situation reassuring?!! Leave us a comment below this article.
With regards from the #Ezznology Team
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